


see you on the moon, then

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Psychotropic Drugs, Reunion Sex, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unsafe Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 17:54:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5258066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post 'kill the moon' and interwoven with 'mummy on the orient express': scenes from a breakup...and a reunion</p>
            </blockquote>





	see you on the moon, then

Her tiny body shakes with tears as she tells him to leave and never come back. The Doctor looks down at her, uncomprehending. His scale of time is just so much larger than hers: he's seen worse than this tiny moon incident. And he knows that there will be more shit to come. Yet somehow this is different. It's a rift in his relationship with Clara that may never fully heal. _This is why you don't get attached,_ he reminds himself.

He throws himself into the old routine. Tries to lose himself in any world he can. (He avoids Earth at all costs.) It's not the same without Clara there. But every time he hits the telepathic circuits, her face is the only thing that appears.

He takes the TARDIS to a planet on the farthest reaches of the galaxy, as far from Earth and Coal Hill and Clara as it's possible to be. It's a dusty sand planet that grows nothing but lotuses. Lotuses that, as it happens, can be ingested and used as mind-altering drugs.  
He spends time there in an ashram getting incredibly fucked up. He knows that his alien body can take it - that he'll just absorb it all and come out fine - but he just needs to _feel_ something right now. He knows, too, that he's messing with his own timeline, and possibly the timeline of others.

He doesn't fucking care.

Weeks pass in a blurry haze. The Doctor finally wakes up covered in filth, the stale smell of the lotuses all around him. He stumbles back to the TARDIS, which he left parked in the desert not far outside the ashram. There are rude alien words written on it in something that looks suspiciously like blood. The Doctor sonics the words off and waits for his Gallifreyan body to scrub out all the drugs. It will take awhile for all those cells to re-calibrate, but he can wait. He's got time.

He keeps expecting the TARDIS phone to ring and it doesn't. It doesn't for weeks and weeks, until one day, incredibly, he hears that cheerful little _brrrring brrrrring_ announcement of hope. He lets it ring, and ring, and ring. It's her. It's _probably_ her. No, it's _definitely_ her. Who else would it be? Hardly anyone even _has_ the TARDIS phone number...The Doctor is so busy weighing the pros and cons of answering, debating within himself of who it could be, that it's now stopped.

Clara calls back a few days later. (It was her, after all. Of course it was.) She sounds a bit tired. He can hear the shriek of a teakettle in the background. Clara asks him to pick her up. "A last hurrah" she calls it. He wants to make sure it's a good one. And it is. She tells him that she could never hate him. Her tiny human body, and her tiny human words for this thing between them, these emotions, that are too big for either of them to control.

After that, she commits to "knocking about" with him. He can hardly believe it. He's scared that if he shows her something too big, too scary, a planet that's too impressive or dangerous, he'll fuck this up again. So they start out slow. They ride the tube together toward her flat, which for him, she figures, is adventure enough. "Chips? Coffee? Or chips _and_ coffee?" she asks, parroting his earlier words. He rolls his eyes. "Or maybe we should get takeaway." Clara gestures to the advert above their heads. "Evidently it gives you that '#minifistpump feeling.'"

"Whatever you want," he responds. The car they're riding in lurches, then, and he leans heavily against her before abruptly burrowing into his coat. The brief moment of pressure is warm, solid; Clara knows she'll hold onto that sense memory for a long time.

They get takeaway after all, and eat it together in Clara's kitchen. The clink-scrape of their utensils echoes loud - a bit too loud. "This lady - on the train - she asked me," Clara says finally. She focuses on her food as she speaks. "She said. Um. 'This Doctor - he's your what, exactly?'" (Danny becomes an invisible presence conjured up by their conversation. He exists, for Clara, as an afterthought sometimes. Her actions and words don't always line up. She knows this. There are things she does with the Doctor that she doesn't with Danny. It's just her reality.)

"So what are we, then?" the Doctor asks, picking at the mysterious chicken-like substance he's got in his box.

"Space friends-with-benefits, I suppose?" Clara suggests. He lifts an eyebrow and Clara laughs, explains the human term.

"Are you ok with that?"

"Yeah," Clara says. "I think we both need something to do - a distraction from all the adventure. Besides, I _like_ you, as insufferable as you can be."

He shuffles, shrinks, when she says that. Stares into his takeaway box.

"So, shall we?" she asks in order to break the awkwardness, nodding towards her room. He seems a bit relieved at that. Here is territory that he knows, territory that they've crossed and recrossed with each other countless times before.

Clara looks over at him when they're done. He's staring at the ceiling. The Doctor never falls asleep, he just falls into deep and measured breathing. Waiting for her, just like always. She can feel the last remnants of him dripping out of her. She shivers at the familiar drag: slow, clingy, thick, soaking into her sheets. A reminder that she's back with him. She can't wait for the next round.


End file.
